Updated Von Braun Lunar Explorer

[Weaver]

My build is going to be the Glencoe/Stromberg "Retriever Rocket", which is either 1/72nd or 1/67th, depending who you ask, updated for a bit more realism without, hopefully, destroying it's character. A Revell 1/100th (or 1/96th... ) Apollo CSM might become a parts donor. Backstory not decided yet: possibly part of the British space programme, but that depends on decals, since my printer isn't really up to doing my own these days.

Things I'm definitely doing:
Replacing the nose-mounted nuclear reactor with combined solar panels and radiators
Fitting a MUCH bigger engine bell
Adding RCS thrusters
Raising the comms dish so that it has a 360 deg view past the tanks
Detailing the bottle suit

Thing's I'd like to do but aren't sure about:
Adding a personnel airlock that doesn't depend on the bottle suit

I won't be starting this build immediately, since what is hopefully the last act of sorting out my late aunt's will is now finally under way, but with, inevitably, it's own hurdles.

[Weaver]

Heh, just had a root through the spare parts stash, and eyeballed a cracking way to make the modified airlock...  

[Weaver]

Grrrr.... I've finally got all the bits sorted out and all the decisions made for this, but I'm STILL stuck sorting out the last acts of dealing with my auntie's will, something that could have been sorted out a couple of weeks ago, but for <rant deleted>     

[Weaver]

Right, Getting On With It is now officially occurring!

The obligatory parts pic. Told you I'd "eyeballed" a good way of making the airlock...



Here we have:

Glencoe 1/72nd scale (allegedly) Retriever Rocket
Nozzle from a Revell 1/100th (or 1/96th, depending on the boxing) Apollo CSM
Various bits of payloads from the Airfix 1/144th Vostock rocket
Chrome wheels from an Italeri 1/24th Black Thunder truck
Three HO/OO catenary wire pylons from the local model shop's spares box
Four 1/72nd Scale Modern German Tank crew from Orion's Germans and Israelis set (probably only 2 or 3 will be used)
And... a plastic Halloween eyeball

Missing from the picture are the numerous RCS nozzles which the Revell 1/100th Lunar Lander will be donating. Also missing is the alternative to the nuclear reactor on the front, because I havn't decided what to replace it with yet (still mulling over options).

I took this picture at 2pm yesterday, thinking I'd put it up immediately and then get a solid afternoon's modelling in. Instead, I got a solid afternoon's p***ing about with my PC in because it kept locking up. Turned out that Microsoft had helpfully uploaded a bit of software in the latest update, without telling anyone, which helpfully switches on in the background when you try to edit photos in the default picture editor, without telling you, and then helpfully eats all the available RAM, without telling you or giving you a way of switching it off. So it's now easier to edit pics in my third-party fancy editor instead of the simple default one...    

[Gondor]

I have an old copy of Paint Shop Pro that I use for picture editing and have done for years. Mind you the editing is usually rotating, cropping and rescaling the pictures I have taken with my phone.

[Joe CalPo]

Don't keep us waiting!  That's quite the pile of parts.

[PR19_Kit]

I have an old copy of Paint Shop Pro that I use for picture editing and have done for years. Mind you the editing is usually rotating, cropping and rescaling the pictures I have taken with my phone.

I've used PSP since it first came out. The guy who wrote it was originally in the Software Dept at MTS where I worked, and I got them all up to PSP 5 for free. 

I use PSP 4 as my usual graphics prog, and 5 for the odd extras the 4 doesn't have, fractional degrees of rotation.

[Weaver]

Well I thought I might get some parts undercoated today, but no chance! This thing is flashy as hell, so I've spent today's modelling time cleaning parts up and glueing the tanks together. One peculiarity of this kit, and one which scuppered my original plan based on having two, is that the tanks are moulded as "buckets and lids" with the tube and one end all in one piece and the other end a separate piece. This means that the tanks sit very deep into the mould, and thus have to be slightly conical in order to eject properly. This in turn means that you can't make double-length tanks by siamesing them together, because the front and rear caps are different and the only way to join them is back ends together, which means you'd end up with two fronts.

Two old Airfix Phantom Vulcan gunpod bottoms halves, some map pins, some N-gauge corrugated roof and another 1/144th Vostok spacecraft body have now been added to the cast list. A Vostock capsule has been modified for it's roll as an engine combustion chamber, and the Apollo nozzle glued together, cleaned up and modded to fit. Two catenary wire towers have been cut up and glued together. I'm also pretty confident how I'm going to do the power system now.

[kerick]

For the tanks it sounds like you need some PVC pipe.
I would suggest pill bottles but they are almost impossible to glue.

[Weaver]

For the tanks it sounds like you need some PVC pipe.
I would suggest pill bottles but they are almost impossible to glue.

Thanks, but I've changed the concept now so I don't need the stretched tanks. It was only a thought experiment along the lines of "what could I do with these?" shortly after, against all odds, I found my second Retriever Rocket going cheap at a model show.

[Weaver]

So nearly nothing happened today because I had to take advantage of the good weather to get some outside jobs done. However it's the last we'll see of it for a week, so plently more model building coming up.

The one thing that did happen was that I stripped the paint off a couple of the truck wheels with caustic soda. Never tried it before, but it worked a treat.

[Weaver]

So, this one's dead. Sorry guys. 

A mixture of illness and stuck mojo kept me off it until last week. Then, long story short, I found that making one of my mods was much more difficult than I thought, and in the process I realised that it was ill-conceived anyway. I've spent the last 48 hours trying to come up with a way to fix the concept, using the parts I've got, in the time available, and none of them make sense. I can't hand-waive the problems away with "magic" technology either, since the baseline standard for the build is "old-fashioned real-space".

The only other solution I can see would involve chopping up my other Retriever Rocket kit to use 10% of it, and I'm just not willing to do that. In any case, the reason why the Retriever Rocket is that shape is that it's supposed to be a re-used spaceplane fuselage, and by the time you've cut it up and reworked it enough to do what I want, any savings from the re-use would be way overshadowed by the awkward compromises, and you'd be better off just building something new.

[Rick Lowe]

Annoying, but Practice is good. 

And you can still reuse the parts elsewhere.